The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

by Zakes Mda

  Perhaps it had to do with the Swahili. Abdul wa Salim and his colleagues had come to his compound once, even though they had heard he no longer had gold. Their intention had been to negotiate with him to take ownership of the concubine which Baba-Munene had forced them to take back since none of the patricians on top of the hill were interested in making use of her. Alas, they were stuck with her and would have to take her back to Kilwa with them; Chata was not interested in any woman. Instead he had taken them to the back of the house, past the Gapers to the grotto, and showed them the only woman he was interested in. They had marvelled at the Rain Dancer. They had stood in the grotto for a long time looking very closely at the fine artistry, at the detail on the gold and the ivory, and at the elated expression of the Khoikhoi woman and the heads of the fantastical creatures that grew from the face. The Swahili wanted to take Chata with them to carve for the great potentates of Arabia, India and China. He was not interested. Later he had heard that Rendani had suggested he be captured by force and be sold to the traders. Baba-Munene had laughed at the joke; he had never heard of human beings being sold. Even the phuli who worked as miners or cattle herders could not be bought or sold. They had either been captured in some war or had bonded themselves to their master in exchange for food and security.

  Was it because of the fame his work had received that they were putting him through the embarrassment of an honour he did not deserve? He hoped the speech that was unfolding would explain that. He sat expressionlessly and listened with the rest. He wished Chenayi was there, squatting at his feet. He had been with him watching the antics of the Gapers when he was suddenly summoned to the top of the hill. The Royal Messenger ordered him to look presentable because the King had decided to honour him. He did not believe the Royal Messenger; he thought it was one of Rendani’s tricks. One never knew with Rendani. When the Royal Messenger insisted Chata said he was going to go as he was. He asked Chenayi to come with him, but the idiot savant bolted from the compound. He had been surprised to find the gathering of carvers. They must have known of the meeting days before. When he was offered a stool near the Council of Elders he realised that it was not a joke. The only time he had been in the presence of these revered figures was when he was the accused. He was glad that he looked rather shabby in the company of these well-attired grandees. It asserted his defiance.

  “It is not because people are using Chata’s sculpture as inspiration for false prophecies that we are honouring him today,” continued Baba-Munene. “Those who do so are misguided and now that Chata is being honoured like this by the King he has the obligation to stop that heresy.”

  This honour was Rendani’s idea, said Baba-Munene beaming at his son-in-law. He responded with a beatific smile of his own. This magnanimous son of Zwanga made representations to the King through his esteemed father-in-law that this man, who used to be Zwanga’s ward and learnt the craft at Zwanga’s feet, be honoured in this manner. Rendani even invented the new title: Muvhaḓi wa Vhavhaḓi, Carver of Carvers, so that it would not be confused with the time-honoured title that was given to the great masters who had had great students at their feet: Muvhaḓi Makone. The King had listened to these presentations carefully, and granted them. Since this was a new honour it came with new responsibilities. The Royal Sculptor would lay them down to Chata later that day.

  “It is a sacred trust that this kingdom is giving you,” added Baba-Munene. “Carry it with pride and with the respect it deserves.”

  He ordered Chata to stand up. He gave him a beaded staff and placed across his shoulders a kaross made of tanned leopard, zebra and giraffe skins patched together. Henceforth he would be known as the Carver of Carvers.

  A man blew the hwamanda horn and another one played mbila, the xylophone of the spirits. This was a signal to the women of the compound that the serious part of the ceremony was over. They appeared in a line carrying on their heads clay pots of marula and sorghum beer. Soon foaming gourds were being passed around.

  Chata sat between two armed guards. He was bemused. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Many carvers couldn’t believe it either. Some even left abruptly without partaking of the beer. Both those who left and those who remained talked in low tones, asking one another what the significance of the honour was. It sounded like it was more important than the Muvhaḓi Makone honour that many carvers would die without attaining. Chata was a young man whose gift was only in creating strange creatures. He had not trained a single carver. How could he be Carver of Carvers, which implied he was the best of the best?

  “Were these Zwanga Twins, as we called them when they were little, not mortal enemies? Didn’t we hear stories of their rivalry and skulduggery?” asked one aged carver.

  “It shows that Rendani has a big heart,” responded another greybeard.

  The rest mumbled their agreement. Indeed Rendani performed his duties as the Royal Sculptor without fear or favour. But that did not answer the question about the name and therefore the meaning of the honour. At that moment Rendani was doing the rounds among groups of carvers, and accepting their congratulations with grace and humility.

  “How do you answer that, Rendani, since you are the instigator of this?” asked a carver. “Does it mean that in the eyes of our living ancestor Chata is the best carver among us all?”

  “It was the King’s decision,” said Rendani. “I merely suggested it.”

  “Carver of Carvers? Perhaps it says exactly what it means; the man will carve other carvers,” joked another.

  “That indeed is one of the things he is required to do,” said Rendani with a twinkle in his eye. “He will start by carving the Royal Sculptor for posterity. He has shown with his Rain Dancer that he has the gift of capturing the true image of a person.”

  “I haven’t seen this Rain Dancer thing that people are talking about, but they say its head is composed of the faces of many monsters. How can you say then that he knows how to capture real images?”

  “The Khoikhoi woman sitting under the dancer looks exactly like the woman we saw begging in the town with her brood of children. Go see it and you’ll believe me.”

  The carver shook his head vigorously.

  “No, not me, I’m not getting close to the mad people who call themselves the Community of Gapers.”

  “They won’t last for long,” said Rendani. “Their owner is now the Carver of Carvers and therefore owes his total allegiance to the King and will carve only those things that glorify him and his kingdom.”

  Chata thought that since the ceremony was over and those who remained were merely socialising he could return to his abode down the hill. In any event, he was not part of the bonhomie because the carvers seemed to keep their distance from him. He couldn’t say whether it was because they were resentful or were in awe of his new status. The two guards, armed with spears and shields, followed everywhere he went, and as soon as he joined a group that was engaged in animated conversation it suddenly fell silent.

  “I’m going home now so I no longer need a ceremonial guard of honour,” said Chata to the guards. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “You cannot go back to the town,” said one of the guards. “You belong to the hill now. Those are the orders of the King.”

  “The King spoke to you and gave you those orders?”

  “Don’t be silly. As a Mapungubwean you should know that no one speaks to the King but Baba-Munene. Okay, maybe his wives when it is their turn to visit him.”

  “And his children,” said the second soldier.

  “Surely he must speak to his children!”

  “Baba-Munene gave us the King’s strict orders. Our duty is to protect you at all times. You are the Carver of Carvers.”

  Despite his attempts to resist, he was not allowed to return home. He was told that the King had ordered that he be accommodated at the far end of Baba-Munene’s compound where all his needs would be catere
d for. His new home was the house that had been occupied by the unwanted concubine. It was beautifully decorated with patterns on the outside and inside walls. On the walls and floors were tanned hides of zebra, giraffe and leopard. A few steps from the house were a newly built kiln and a furnace. There were all the tools that a carver and smithy would need.

  Deep in the night when only witches are abroad, members of the Royal Guard went down the hill and cleared Chata’s house of all his precious possessions, including his silk material, his Swahili garb, his ceramic and clay bowls, his tools, his Azande weapons, his tanned skins and hides, and his shields and spears. They took all these to his new abode on top of the hill. A group of them carried the Rain Dancer. As they struggled up the hill with the sculpture it broke and the Namaqua woman was separated from the dancer.

  They set his house on fire.

  When Chenayi, Ma Chirikure and the Community of Gapers got there in the morning only smouldering ruins were left. And pungent fumes.

  The Gapers wailed for their Rain Dancer. For a number of days they went to the ashen site to mourn. When they heard that she was on top of the hill with Chata who was now a pampered Carver of Carvers they cursed him and vowed that he would reap a harvest of perpetual sadness. But they dared not go to the top of the hill to demand the return of the Rain Dancer or to sing and prophesy at her new quarters. The number of mourners dwindled until no one came again. Anotida died of a broken heart and a repentant Lutendo returned to the fold of her beloved and forgiving family of diviners.

  Chenayi and Ma Chirikure were left with the feeling that Chata had betrayed them. The boy went back to his scavenging around town, with only the mirror to remind him of Chata. Ma Chirikure sat outside her house all day long, looking at the boulders on the hilltop, hoping that one day she would see Chata rolling down.

  IT HAD NOT RAINED since Chata was confined by his title to the top of the hill four seasons before. The drought was on everyone’s lips. Once more the rain doctors were busy mixing their rain medicines and chanting their incantations to the ancestors, begging them to appeal to Mwali to release the waterways of the sky. The King emerged from sacred seclusion and undertook the long journey to distant rainmaking hills with his praise singers, diviners and rain doctors in tow. He returned after many days. But the rain refused to fall.

  Baba-Munene ordered that Marubini the Rain Dancer be summoned. The messengers came back with the news that she no longer lived in Mapungubwe. Even her parents said they didn’t know where she was since she ran away from Rendani’s dzekiso. They denied the rumours that they had sent her away to live with relatives. They would long ago have fetched her with a whip if they had any inkling of her whereabouts.

  Chata did not show any concern even when the Royal Feeders brought him morsels of gossip as relish for the food and beer that they served him. Every day at about midday a line of maidens made its way to his quarters with bowls of delicacies ranging from fried mopane worms served with sorghum meal cooked with pumpkin leaves to marula fruit in season. One of them would also carry a small clay pot of marula beer. Sometimes there would be freshly roasted game. Every time he ate such meat he felt sick because he knew that the hunters had not apologised for killing the animal. That was why he preferred meat he had personally hunted. But now he was not allowed to go hunting. He was not allowed to go anywhere. He was the Carver of Carvers.

  He hoped Rendani would broil in his own guilt since it was his greed for power that had sent the Rain Dancer away, and now the whole kingdom was suffering for it. But Rendani never mentioned Marubini at all when he came to gloat over his victory. Of course he didn’t put his visits in those terms. He came to make sure that the Carver of Carvers wanted for nothing. He entered the house as if he owned it, without first announcing himself at the door as was the custom. Or if he found Chata outside playing a count-and-capture board game with the two soldiers whose sole function was to protect him, he called Chata into the house and reprimanded him for associating with common soldiers. “You are Muvhaḓi wa Vhavhaḓi,” he said. When Chata protested Rendani reminded him of the responsibilities of his position, and that he was denigrating an important honour if he didn’t treat it with respect. And that wouldn’t make the King happy, would it now?

  Rendani paced the dolerite concrete floor, stood next to the Rain Dancer, now in two pieces and lying on the floor next to the wall, and sneezed. It made him sick that all that gold had been wasted on creating a monstrosity and a Khoikhoi woman. It was self-indulgent to create the body of a woman he had committed immorality with, and it was sacrilegious to create a beggar woman in gold instead of works that glorified the King. As the Carver of Carvers he would henceforth create only work that sang the praises of the kingdom, the King, and the important families on top of the hill.

  “In fact, as your title indicates the first person you must carve is me, the Royal Sculptor. You are the Carver of Carvers. Then after that you can carve the King’s sacred totem, the rhino. Maybe the jackal as well, since this is the hill of the jackal. Then carve other carvers to immortalise them – the Vhavhaḓi Makone.”

  This was not the first time Rendani had demanded that the gold of the Rain Dancer should be melted and part of it should be used to create his image, while the rest should be used for making objects for the King and, of course, for Baba-Munene: sacred bowls, sceptres, bracelets and anklets. That was what a Carver of Carvers was supposed to do instead of moping over the broken pieces of a sacrilegious sculpture.

  At first Chata had ignored these demands, but Baba-Munene came in person and reinforced them, after gently admonishing him for not wearing his ceremonial kaross in public, and not carrying his beaded staff. What Rendani demanded was exactly what the King expected of the kingdom’s first Carver of Carvers.

  Chata had gone ahead to perform his first task as the Carver of Carvers – the carving of Rendani’s image in wood, which would then be covered with gold leaf. Rendani had to sit for the carving and Chata had chiselled the wood very slowly. Rendani discovered to his consternation that having his image carved needed much patience and took too much of the time he should otherwise be using to resolve disputes as a member of the Council of Elders. He had brilliantly worked out a scheme where Chata had become his prisoner. But through this sculpture the jailer had become the prisoner’s prisoner. Rendani had sat for many hours and yet Chata made very little progress on the stump of wood. He was not too pleased that his day had been wasted.

  “I started carving you already, Rendi, but you never came back to sit for the sculpture,” said Chata, perching on the stool and watching Rendani sneer and sneeze at the prostrate Rain Dancer.

  “Don’t make me an excuse, Chatambudza; you’ve not even started melting this gold.”

  “This is my gold. If I have to create for the kingdom then the kingdom must supply the gold and the ivory.”

  “I’ll come back and sit for the sculpture, but don’t think I’m not aware that you chisel slowly on purpose,” he said and stormed out.

  Chata followed him and was walking back to his game with the soldiers when Rendani yelled at the soldiers: “Your job is to protect the Carver of Carvers, not to play with him.”

  “Protect me from what?” Chata yelled back.

  “Protect you from anyone who would want to harm the Carver of Carvers. People out there are evil. Protect you from yourself even.”

  Chata sat on a rock ready to play. But the soldiers stood up and walked away from the board game.

  “Surely, you don’t take Rendani seriously,” said Chata.

  “You’re an important person,” said one of the soldiers. “We can’t play with you.”

  Chata muttered: “It’s true that nothing imprisons like a throne. Or a pedestal of any kind. Once you’ve been placed on a pedestal you can wave goodbye to freedom.”

  He walked into the house to contemplate the Rain Dancer. The soldiers stood guard at the door.
One said: “I’d rather be a slave with a pedestal than a slave without one.”

  “Like us,” said the other one.

  “Yes, slaves like us. This man is fed and pampered and can bask in the sun all day, yet he is complaining. He even has guards to protect him as if he were the King himself.”

  Although they were talking softly Chata could hear every word. Pity the men. They thought they were his protectors. They were not aware that they were his jailers.

  Chata was bound to get bored. They expected him to produce works of art yet they were not providing him with the materials he needed. All he had were the tools. Apparently Rendani had given up the idea of being carved because it was too onerous to sit still for hours on end. For a while Rendani and Baba-Munene seemed to forget about him. He heard from the new guards who had been assigned to relieve the regular ones that there were visitors from Kilwa. A few days later Rendani brought them to him. He was surprised to see that one of the Swahili traders was Hamisi wa Babu, the man who had taken him in his dhow to Aden and Mogadishu. As far as he knew, the man had been banned from Mapungubwe for some indiscretion he never got to understand. He didn’t know that the trader had paid reparations and was now embraced by Rendani, who was only a boy when Hamisi wa Babu was banned.

  “When next are you joining us, Chata?” asked Hamisi wa Babu.

  “Oh, he can’t join you any more. He is now the Carver of Carvers and can’t leave this compound,” Rendani quickly answered on his behalf.

  Hamisi wa Babu looked at his kaross and his beaded staff and the two soldiers who stood behind him. “Have you been elevated to some kind of a pagan deity?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” said Rendani, and he led the visitors away.

  Chata had not said a word except to return the greeting.

  Later he heard from the Royal Feeders that Rendani had taken Hamisi wa Babu and his entourage game hunting. He would be gone for a couple of days.